Voice

The Medieval Studies Program at Cornell University is pleased to announce its twenty-eighth annual colloquium, which will take place on the 17th of February at the A.D. White House on Cornell’s Ithaca, NY campus.

From Priscian’s grammatical vox to the polyphonic motets of the 13th and 14th centuries, voices resound throughout the manuscripts, material culture, music, and literature of the Middle Ages. As scholars we rely on audible and inaudible voices to recover and to listen to the medieval world. Medieval authors also negotiated their styles and identities with the voices of the past. Theologians and saints often strained to articulate and to hear the voice of God. In short, this conference seeks to explore the ways that voices have been recorded, translated, harmonized, and illustrated in the Middle Ages. We are interested in papers that investigate the ways that voices inform and express medieval thought and culture from an interdisciplinary perspective.

We welcome proposals for twenty-minute papers from graduate students and early career scholars on topics including, but not limited to:

– Oral vs. written voices

– Voices in inscriptions and material culture

– Animal or monstrous voices

– Physical or medical manifestations of voice

– Authoritative vs. marginalized voices

– Neumes, musical notation, and other records of voice

– Depictions of voice in visual culture

– Voice and gender

– Voices in translation

Furthermore, we welcome submissions that expand these themes and categories of inquiry beyond Christian, Western European contexts. We invite submissions in all disciplines allied to Medieval Studies, including literature, history, the history of art, archaeology, philosophy, theology, Near Eastern Studies, and others. Abstracts on all topics will be considered, though priority will be given to those which address our thematic strand.

Please send abstract submissions (ca. 300 words) to mssc@cornell.edu by 30 November 2017, with ‘MSSC 2018’ in the subject line, for consideration.​